


hotpot, english tutors, confessions, and exes

by Dancing_Fangirl



Category: NINE PERCENT (Band), Tangram (Band), 乐华七子NEXT | NEX7
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Not Idols, Friend groups, Gen, Getting Back Together, M/M, Minor Fan Chengcheng/Huang Minghao | Justin, Not Beta Read, Post-Break Up, i try to squish chengstin into everything i write because i miss them, rushed ending author will come back and make it better when she feels motivated, set in china because i wanted to make it realistic, the9 are just weird waiters, where is the minor zhengkun and lin fan / keran tag, yanjun is an english genius thats where the idea of this came from, yanjun just misses zhangjing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-15
Updated: 2021-01-15
Packaged: 2021-03-12 15:28:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28762593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dancing_Fangirl/pseuds/Dancing_Fangirl
Summary: was titled "a self indulgent exes zhangjun fic with english student yanjun aka my favourite" in the authors drafts but she doesn't want to use it but shes also grown strangely attached to it so shes putting it in the summary.“Good to see that you’re here. Zhangjing, here’s your new tutor, he’s one of my best students and should be able to help you along in this class. Yanjun, Zhangjing is a great student and you should have no problem tutoring him. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have things to get to.”{or where a year after zhangjing and yanjun have their messy breakup even though they might still love eachother, zhangjing is failing english and gets assigned to be tutored by the best english student in their school - who is of course, lin yanjun }
Relationships: Cai Xukun/Zhu Zhengting | Jung Jung, Fan Chengcheng/Huang Minghao | Justin, Lin Fan | Marco/Lu Keran, Lin Yanjun/You Zhangjing, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	hotpot, english tutors, confessions, and exes

Being friends with Chengcheng and Justin meant that You Zhangjing had seen a lot of stupid things in his life. But normally, he was the one watching said stupid things, not the one doing said stupid things. 

He blamed Lin Yanjun. 

“Zhangjing, this is the third time I’ve given you the chance to re-do this assignment, and honestly, even if you didn’t do good, you should be able to scrap a passing grade by merely copying off your old papers and making the corrections I mentioned.”

The short highschool student sighed. “I know sir, but english just isn’t my forte.”

His teacher looked at him pointedly, glancing down to the obviously not passing 37% on the title page of his assignment. 

“I can tell.”

“Is there anything I can do to make up for it? Again? I know it might not seem like it but I really am trying,” Zhangjing tried again. 

“It’s not your writing that isn’t good, but it’s just that you’re misusing certain words that make the entire paper confusing. Add that along with the incorrect spelling of the words that you do know, it just becomes incomprehensible. And I know that you’re not bad at writing, because I’ve seen your papers from your chinese literature class,” he picked up Zhangjing’s assignment, looking through it, the red pen blatantly contrasting from the white paper. 

“Honestly, I have a couple choices. I could straight up fail you now, because I’ve given you enough chances to prove yourself.”

Zhangjing’s heart dropped to the bottom of his stomach, thinking of how badly that would disappoint his parents, despite the fact that it shouldn’t matter, because he was better off studying for their final exams that would decide their university than redoing the project that was the literal bane of his existence.

“But I see the effort that you put in. And I know that you want to do well on this year's final exams too, so I could either give you another project, hopefully take your mind off this, or you can find yourself an english tutor, maybe help you study for the exams too.”

A visible sense of relief ran through the music student's body. “Thank you so much sir, I’ll be sure to put in all of my effort into studying for this class.”

“Make sure you space out your studying to your other classes too. You don’t have to tell me which one you want to pick right now, but I suggest getting a tutor. If you don’t know anybody who's doing exceptionally well in english I have a list of people who would probably be willing to help you out. I’ll see you in tomorrow's class Zhangjing.”

“Thank you sir, have a nice day. I’ll get my choice to you by tomorrow's class.”

“Kun, why can’t you tutor me? You’re the only person who speaks english that I know,” Zhangjing whined to the younger while his boyfriend laughed beside him. 

“I wish I could, but I don’t have time with basketball season coming up. Besides, I’m a grade younger than you, so what's the biggest help I could be?” 

“Uh, everything? At least you can speak it,” Zhengting laughed in the middle at the two of them. 

“Zhangjing, have you tried Chengcheng? He lived in America too.” Zhangjing groaned, throwing himself onto the library chair. 

“He said that he was ditching me to hang out with Justin. Justin? They’re in their first year, nothing matters!”

Zhengting looked at his boyfriend in thought. Zhangjing looked at the two of them. Kun looked at Zhengting in confusion. 

“Zhengting, why don’t you just speak your ideas? You know that we can’t read your mind right?” Zhangjing asked the dancer, who in response kept looking at his boyfriend. 

A couple seconds later Kun’s eyes widened, first in terror, and then in amazement. 

“Why don’t you ask Yanjun?” Zhangjing’s eyes widened too, in terror, and then definitely not in amazement after. 

“Oh, I wonder why not,” he said, looking at the two of them, words dripping with sarcasm. “It’s not like we’re ex-boyfriends who haven’t talked in a year since we had the messiest breakup in the history of breakups, right?”

Zhengting rolled his eyes. “Don’t be dramatic.”

“Says you,” Zhangjing muttered under his breath, rolling his eyes when the youngest out of the three snorted. 

“It’s fail or get Yanjun to tutor you. You know that he’ll definitely say yes, you know right?”

It seemed like Zhangjing was rolling his eyes a lot, but who could blame him when he was talking to those two?

“I’m going to ask Linong.”

“Ah yes, the child you and Yanjun practically raised together. To do what, help you with english? He might not be failing, but he’s definitely not at the same grade level as us since he’s you know, two years younger?”

“Don’t be dumb. I’m asking him if he knows anybody else who could help me with english.”

Linong didn’t know anybody (other than Yanjun, his first and only suggestion, but he was definitely not saying yes). Neither did Justin, and chances were if he didn’t, Chengcheng wouldn’t either. So that was how he found himself standing outside of his english teacher’s classroom after school, getting ready to meet the tutor his teacher had set him up with after he admitted he hadn’t found anybody during class. 

“Zhangjing? There you are.”

“Hi sir.”

“I found you a tutor in your grade who seems willing to help you with your english, and he should be here soon, he’s just walking back from the music department.”

“He’s also interested in music? Thank you sir.” Zhangjing took a deep breath, relieved that he was probably going to get along fine with the other student. 

The classroom door opened, and a head of silver hair peaked through the door, the rest of his body walking into the room. 

“Good afternoon sir.”

“Good to see that you’re here. Zhangjing, here’s your new tutor, he’s one of my best students and should be able to help you along in this class. Yanjun, Zhangjing is a great student and you should have no problem tutoring him. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have things to get to.”

Yes, with or without his friends, You Zhangjing was screwed. He knew asking for a tutor was stupid, especilly when his ex-boyfriend was the most genius english student in the entire school despite never living in an english speaking country and for gods sake why was he so dumb?

“Hi.”

“Uh, hi.”

“You never said that you were struggling in english.”

That was because when we were still together you used to help me with everything in english I had problems with. And I would get good grades in english, and you just never realized, Zhangjing thought, but he could never say that. 

“This is so awkward,” the taller muttered under his breath in english. 

“Sorry about that,” the older looked back to the ground. The two of them were in front of their highschool, watching the cars go by one at a time, carefully avoiding talking to each other. 

“Hey, do you still have my phone number?” I don’t, because Zhengting made me delete it after what would’ve been our three year anniversary, but I have it memorized from the amount of time I’ve looked at it contemplating to call you, Zhangjing wanted to say in response. 

“Hm, I might, but since I cleaned out the random phone numbers I had a while back I might’ve deleted yours along with it since it's been a while…” his voice trailed off, leaving the two of them in an awkward silence once again.

“How about I treat you to hotpot at the place we used to go to? Unless you don’t want free food?” Yanjun asked, hoping that the olders favourite thing could cure the awkwardness that had settled between the two of them, throwing in the second sentence as an attempt to revive the playful atmosphere that they used to have. 

“You’re paying.”

“Deal.”

The first person to hear about Zhangjing’s tutoring arrangement was Linong. Honestly, he should’ve guessed because the younger was probably even closer with Yanjun than him, because despite the two of them co-parenting him in the two and a half years they were a couple, plus the two before filled with angstily obvious pinning, Yanjun had always had a better bond with Linong than Zhangjing had. 

So when the younger had called him up two hours after their hotpot meeting while he was doing homework, Zhangjing wasn’t very surprised. 

“Hi Linong, what’s up?”

The younger skipped any small talk, cutting straight to the point. “Are you doing fine?”

Zhangjing sighed into the phone receiver. “I could be doing better. It hasn’t really settled in I suppose, it’s probably going to be worse when we actually start the tutoring sessions.”

“And when’s that?”

“Oh don’t pretend like you don’t know, that was probably the first thing you asked,” Zhangjing teased, offering the date and time of the next day right after school anyways right after. 

“Make sure to tell me if anything specifically happens?”

“Definitely will. What did Yanjun say to you when he told you he was tutoring me?” the younger of the two of them was silent for a while, before responding. 

“Don’t worry about it, nothing interesting,” Zhangjing furrowed his eyebrows even though Linong couldn’t see through the phone. “You know, you never even told me why the two of you broke up.”

Zhangjing winced. There was a reason why neither he or Yanjun had told anybody any details, and why the breakup had been as messy as it was. 

“Don’t worry about it, nothing interesting,” he replied, imitating the younger, coaxing a laugh from the other end of the phone. 

“Have you told anybody else about the whole tutoring thing?”

“Just about everybody knows I was looking for a tutor since I asked a bunch of people, but nobody else knows Yanjun’s the person I was assigned to. I’m not too eager to tell people since I’m pretty sure a bunch of them also suggested I ask him when I was looking for tutors.”

Linong hummed in agreement, knowing their group of friends well. “I’ll let you get back to your work, make sure to tell me about the tutoring session?”

“Yanjun’s probably going to get to you before me, but if you want to hear it twice I’ll probably need to say it outloud once, so you’re free to listen.”

“There are two sides to every story, obviously I’ll listen. You should tell the choir boys too, you haven’t talked to them in a while,” Zhangjing winced, they were definitely going to grind Yanjun into little pieces trying to look for information out of him, like the rest of his current friend group were going to do to him. 

How things were easier when they were one big friend group, before their breakup had split the choir boys to Yanjun when he had pushed away all human interaction except them (if you asked Lu Dinghao he would tell you that it was because he missed Zhangjing and the rest of choir were the closest thing he could get to without actually talking to his ex). 

“Let’s hope that Chaozhe and Yanjun have kept them in line without their main vocalist then.”

“I’ll help you hope, I’ll probably text Maotong later since we're in the same math class, ask him for the homework or something.”

“He’s not going to fall for that.”

“Definitely not, but worth a try,” Zhangjing hung up the phone still laughing at his friend and junior, not any more cleared up on the Yanjun subject, but albeit feeling a bit lighter as he finished his homework. 

“Zhangjing, what is there not to get?” the younger looked at Zhangjing’s failed assignments in shock. 

“English is such a stupid language, why can’t the whole world just speak chinese?”

“Okay, here's what we're going to do. We’re first going to go through the first two of your failed assignments, and we’re going to fix them up together. And then you can go through the most recent one yourself. And then we can see what we’re going to do from there.” Zhangjing looked to the papers and letters with distaste, but took out the first one nonetheless. 

The library was quiet, minus them in the back, most people furiously studying for upcoming tests or the dreaded finals. The afternoon light seeped through the windows on the left, and you could see the basketball team practicing from the indoor court if you looked far out enough to the right. 

“I see what sir was saying, you just need some help with the vocabulary, I think that’s the biggest thing. We can work on grammar rules from there,” Zhangjing looked back down to Yanjun, who was flipping the piece of paper over to finish reading the assignment. 

“This is going to take forever isn’t it,” Yanjun sighed in return. “Let’s hope it doesn’t, I still need to study for math.”

“I see I got to you first Linong,” Zhangjing said when the younger eagerly picked up the phone. 

“Actually, Yanjun called, I just didn’t pick up. I wanted to hear your point of view first. How was it?”

“It was…” Zhangjing’s voice trailed off, looking for the right word. “It seemed normal. It would’ve been normal if it was anybody else, but there was some sort of underlying tension that we just ignored.”

“Well that’s better than you two not getting along, right?” Linong asked. “Are you going to ask to change tutors?”

Zhangjing shook his head, despite Linong not being able to see through the phone. “No, I’ve already put the teacher through a lot of trouble finding me Yanjun, plus grading all of my extra failed assignments. I’ll figure it out.”

Linong hummed in response. “Are you improving at least?”

“It’s better than studying by myself because Yanjun already knows some of my habits. It’s kinda scary how we still work together.”

“Why did you break up then?” 

Zhangjing wanted to tell him, he really did. But he knew that if Yanjun hadn’t told Linong, he shouldn’t either. 

“Ask Yanjun, you know he would tell you.”

“I’ve asked.”

“And?”

Zhangjing heard the scraping sound of a chair, like Linong was getting out of it, and a door shutting behind him. 

“He gave me his side of the story. Really brief, but it just doesn’t seem to make sense,” Zhangjing wanted to ask what he said, before he reminded himself, just because Yanjun was tutoring him in english didn’t mean that he had the right to ask anymore. 

A text buzzed from his phone, and Zhangjing clicked onto it. 

YOU ZHANGJING  
HOW DARE YOU NOT TELL ME  
THAT YOU FOUND YOURSELF A TUTOR  
AND YANJUN OUT OF EVERYBODY  
DID YOU ACTUALLY TAKE MY ADVICE  
AND THAT I HAD TO HEAR IT FROM CHENGCHENG AND JUSTIN OUT OF EVERYBODY

“It seems like more people know that Yanjun’s tutoring me,” Zhangjing said to Linong as he typed a text back in return. 

Yeah, sir partnered me up with him when i said i couldn’t find anybody. 

“Oh? How?”

“I’m not sure, but Zhengting texted me on how he had to find out from Chengcheng and Justin. I guess it's because basketball season started and the court’s next to the library.”

“I supposed then Xukun knows too. Won’t be too long until the couple spread it to everybody else then.”

“Which couple?”

“Chengcheng and Justin.”

“You do know they’re not dating right?” Zhangjing asked, and Linong laughed in return. 

“They would act the same if they were. Zhengting and Xukun have a bet going on, Zhengting thinks that they’re going to be like this for the rest of their lives and Xukun thinks that Chengcheng is going to break and confess this year.”

“At this rate Zhengting’s going to win, with the two of them being this dumb.”

“You know who else is dumb? You and Yanjun.”

“Sorry, I have to go now,” Zhangjing said, hearing the other boy’s name. Linong sighed. 

“When’s your next tutoring session?” 

“We’re probably just going to stick to every day after school for now.”

“You know that Yanjun’s still in choir right? And they have practice after school on Wednesdays.” Zhangjing frowned. It wasn’t like Yanjun to forget about choir, much less to ditch any of his commitments for something else. 

“I’ll probably ask tomorrow. He probably just forgot,” Zhangjing said, brushing it off. “I do actually have to go though, I still have a good amount of homework to do, and I need to study some more.”

“Alright, I’m going to bother Yanjun for details, he’s been blowing up my phone with texts, you would think he’s the younger one. Bye Zhangjing.”

“Bye Nongnong!”

“You Zhangjing! Don’t think you’re getting away this time!” Zhu Zhenting stomped over to the older student, his boyfriend Cai Zukun trailing behind him, trying to hide his fond smile. 

“Hi Zhengting, hi Kun, how’s school been?”

“Don’t how’s school been me, why didn’t you tell me you found a tutor?”

Zhangjing shrugged. “I guessed somebody would tell you eventually.”

“Yes, and out of all those somebodies, it was Justin and Chengcheng? Why did you tell them then?”

“I didn’t, Chengcheng probably saw me in the library after basketball.”

Kun put his arm through Zhengting’s tugging his boyfriend back as a symbol to give Yanjun a break. 

“Are you okay though?”

Zhangjing smiled toward the younger of the couple. 

“I’m doing fine I suppose, it's just weird. Very awkward, but also not, because we’re just pretending that we’re strangers, but there's just some things that strangers wouldn’t do, but exes wouldn’t either, and honestly, now that it’s settled in, it’s just a bit overwhelming,” Zhangjing admitted, letting a sigh out at the end. 

“So I take it you haven’t talked to him about it?” Zhengting asked. 

“I’ve had to stop myself from saying things a couple of times, but if he doesn’t I don’t see a reason to.”

“You know him, and you know that he won’t. Zhangjing, if you won’t talk to him though, at least talk to us.” Zhengting pushed. 

“It’s been a year, there’s not much more to say,” Zhangjing sighed, too tired to say anything else about the sore subject. 

“Just know we’ll always be here for you alright?” Kun said, Zhengting nodding. Zhangjing offered a smile in return as an agreement. 

“Are you meeting today too?” Zhengting asked. 

“Yeah, he should be here soon,” Zhangjing responded, looking out to the hallways leading into the library where they were standing. “Are you guys going to leave now?”

Before Kun could offer a response, Zhengting cut in. 

“Nope, were going to stay and wait for him so I can scare him before you guys start.”

Zhangjing and Kun shared a look, knowing that there was no way that they could get the tallest out of them to change his mind as he pulled out a chair, grabbing his boyfriend’s hand. 

“Zhangjing?” the familiar silver haired teenager stepped into the back section of the library, surprised to find the younger couple there too. 

“Hi Yanjun!” Zhengting waved in response. 

“Hi Zhengting, Xukun,” Yanjun’s voice trailed off in confusion. 

“We’ll be going now, right Zhengting?” 

“Sure, bye Zhangjing! Bye Yanjun, nice seeing you around for once!” and with that the two of them walked out of the shelf they were at, on their way out of the library. 

Yanjun raised an eyebrow at the shorter, sitting down and pulling out his laptop, as a silent questioning of the younger two, but Zhangjing couldn’t give an explanation so he just hoped that Zhengting had thoroughly scared Yanjun and would never do that again. 

The next week was filled with normal school days, tutoring with Yanjun, talking with Linong, and then homework for You Zhangjing, and as much as it wasn’t something the malasyian boy was getting used to, the rest of his friends had somewhat come to terms with it, and had stopped questioning him about it. 

“You had that test in english today, didn’t you?” Yanjun’s voice cut through the silence of the library, grabbing Zhangjing’s attention. 

“Yeah, I think I did fine. Hopefully didn’t fail this one either.”

“I think you’ll do fine. Is there anything else from recently that we still need to cover? I read through the assignment corrections from the one you did by yourself and there isn’t much more to talk about, it’s pretty good,” he said, handing the papers back to the older, letting him look through it. 

“It’s better than before, that’s for sure.”

The two of them fell into another one of their awkward silences that still hadn’t gone away in the last week. 

“Hot pot to celebrate?” Yanjun suddenly asked. “For your test I mean, and improvement in english in such a short amount of time.”

Zhangjing’s brain might’ve short circuited for a moment, but it was reasonable, he tried to convince himself. After all, his ex-boyfriend and current tutor had just asked him out to hot pot for the second time, and even though logically, there was nothing wrong with that and he just wanted to celebrate, Zhangjing couldn’t help but overthink everything. 

“I mean, if you don’t want to, it's fine, we can just end today's tutoring session early,” Yanjun rushed, uncharacteristically nervous, a big contrast from the confident Yanjun that Zhangjing knew. 

“Sure, when have I ever turned down food?” 

Zhangjing why did you do that, he thought to himself. You’re just digging yourself into an even bigger hole (even though if he was anybody else Zhangjing would’ve had no problem saying yes, and if they had gotten the proper closure with the proper feelings gone there would be no hole there in the first place). 

The hot pot store was a familiar date place for the two of them back when they were together, when they would visit together after school or when they would have dinner together, making excuses to their parents that they had things to do despite the adults definitely knowing what they were up to, or when they had a fight and Yanjun didn’t know how to repair his mistakes and Zhangjing didn’t know how to tell him that he was sorry too so they would just sit down and eat in silent apology. 

From the last time that they had been right after Yanjun had been paired to tutor him, Zhangjing was properly given a chance to look at his surroundings. The two of them walked to the closest vacant spot, never really sitting in the same place because of how busy the store always was. The familiar aroma filled the air, a sense of familiarity returning. 

“How about you take a look first,” Yanjun said, handing one of the menus to him, knowing of the olders tendency to take longer to order because he would switch what he was ordering, trying to restrict himself to a couple things only, but ending up with much more than he wanted to. 

The silver haired teen waved at a waiter from the table next to them, calling out his order as she scribbled down the words after he said them, her hands quick from the amount of times that she had written down orders, and his voice confident because even if he would oppose a million times Yanjun would get the same things every time. Zhangjing internally humphed. 

“Anything else?” the girl asked, tucking the list of their orders back inside her apron, phrasing the question as something that was mandatory to ask, that customers would deny every time. “Drinks?”

“One sprite and one cola please,” Yanjun responded when Zhangjing didn’t have anything to say. “Thanks, that’s all.”

The older looked up in confusion. Yanjun wasn’t going to drink both of them, and the cola was his order, the one that he would get back when they would still come here often. Yanjun gave the girl a smile as she walked away calling to the kitchen. 

Zhangjing didn’t say anything in response to Yanjun ordering for him, and instead the two of them spent the two minutes waiting for their drinks in a comfortable silence, letting his own mind wander. 

Zhangjing thought back to the last time they were here before they broke up. The fond memories of Yanjun ordering their drinks first every time, and then him reciting his own order off by heart, and waiting for him to decide. It has been like that for as long as he could remember, the two of them starting the tradition when their parents would get together back when they were just friends and the children would be told to go out and occupy themselves and-

Yanjun was acting like he did before they got together. Like how he did when, quoting Chengcheng “he was pinning really badly in silence, but you just didn’t realize it”. Zhangjing shook the thoughts away to the back of his mind as a waiter approached with their drinks. He was flirty with everybody, he had even flirted when Zhengting when they met despite knowing that he was dating Cai freaking Xukun. 

“Hi, I’m Xie Keyin, I’m going to be serving you two because Keran’s leaving early to ditch us in favour of her girlfriend,” the brunette waiter said with a smile, her outgoing personality making it a bit impossible to hate her despite her unique attitude. 

“It’s me and Lin Fan’s anniversary, you can’t stop me from taking her out for a while!” the black haired girl from earlier shouted from the kitchen. 

“Are you two new to working here?” Yanjun asked. Zhangjing gave him a small look out of the side of his eye before sipping the cola that Keyin had brought. Keyin saw his look and gave a small laugh. 

“Yeah, we were hired recently. But we’ve heard of you two from the rest of the staff if that’s better-” before she could say much more another employee showed up. 

“Keyin, back to work!” Yuxin waved at the two regular, or used to be regular, customers. “Sorry about that, Keyin’s just like that.”

“It’s no problem,” Zhangjing responded, much more comfortable with his highschool junior than the new employees, eyeing the food that she was putting down. “Thanks Yuxin.”

“No problem. You two should come around more,” and she was off, back to the kitchen, leaving the two of them to eat on their own. 

“Well that was a bit weird,” Yanjun looked at Zhangjing, who nodded in response. “It really was, but they’re not too bad, and if Yuxin likes them, how bad can they be?”

The meal was simple, similar enough to every other hot pot meal that he ever had, but the voice in the back of his head reminding him that Yanjun was there didn’t leave the entire night. However, when food beckoned, Zhangjing came, so he tried his best to let the food push his thoughts of the taller boy away. 

After they finished, the two of them sat side by side, looking back at the bubbling broth, stomachs full from their meal. 

“That it?” Yuxin said, coming back to their table, holding their receipt. 

“Yeah, thanks,” Yanjun said, handing her the money for the meal. “You should let me pay, you paid last time too!” Zhangjing protested. 

“It’s fine, if we come again you can pay then,” and before he could protest again the silver haired boy stood up again, adjusting the hat that Zhangjing just noticed he was wearing, the light blue fabric blending into the silver of his hair. 

The two of them walked back out, a light breeze complimenting the mild weather. Zhangjing instinctively wrapped his jacket around himself, retreating into the warm comfort of the fabric. 

“Do you want me to walk you home? It’s not far,” tutors normally don’t walk the people they’re tutoring home, a voice in Zhangjing’s mind said. 

“Actually nevermind-” Yanjun started, his nervousness

“Sure, why not?” 

Really? Zhanging wondered to himself why he was being polite. He never really had a problem of being blunt to people in the past. But Yanjun hummed in response, and Zhangjing didn’t think much more of it, the two of them silently made the walk back to Zhanging’s house, taking the familiar route that they had done many times before. 

“What are you trying to do?”

Two pairs of feet side by side, hitting the sidewalk in a familiar beat, made their way down a small hill. The shorter of the two of them looked up at the younger, confused after blurting out the words, the words that had been running laps in his brain finally giving way, allowing themselves to be spoken. 

“What do you mean?” Yanjun was no doubt confused, the wording had seemed like Zhangjing was accusing him of emotional manipulation or murdeur, or anything else in between. 

“You’re acting like you did…” the older’s voice trailed off, almost afraid of touching the sacred memories. “You know. Before.”

“So you noticed.” Neither of the two had a response after the words left the taller’s lips, and opted to watch the words float away in the breeze, seemingly carrying away the carefully crafted comfort that they had created in the last couple weeks. 

“I’m not sure either. I guessed I just missed you, we were so intertwined with each other that it's just different now.”

Different. A good way to describe their world without each other. They had grown up together, from the first day that the two of them had arrived at the school, finding out that they were neighbours, trying to fix their struggling manderin together, leading to them learning to read each other quickly. And in their new environment where they didn’t interact, well, it was much more than just losing a person, a boyfriend. It was like losing a constant support beam you had with you all your life. 

“I miss you too,” Zhangjing whispered, letting the wind once again sweep up his words, taking them to a place where secrets were held. “But we need to move on.”

“I might. Eventually.” Yanjun didn’t seem upset with the result, or his own answer. It seemed like something he had come to terms with. Zhangjing tried to hide the part in himself that wanted to ask Yanjun to never do that, to live the rest of his life with him. He swallowed that part of himself down. 

“I probably won’t though. You’re my first love. You know that.” Zhangjing did. He tried to ignore the fact that the younger has said you’re instead of you were. Present tense first love. He would always be. 

“But that’s not all you are. You were my best friend. And my soulmate. Romantic, platonic, whatever.” The switch to past tense jolted the older back to present day, back to their own lives and circumstances and environments. 

“Think about it. Or don’t. I’m not asking for you to take me back or anything, but just know that I’ll always be here.”

“I’ll think about it,” Zhangjing echoed, and the rest of the walk home was filled with a tense silence. 

The next morning Yanjun would wake up and get ready for school like he normally would. Check his phone, style his hair, get dressed, walk out the door, eat breakfast, even though not necessarily in that order. 

But when checking his phone he would notice a flagged notification, the special text notifications still there. 

“Can we try again?”

And he would respond, a fond smile on his lips, fingers flying across the keyboard. 

“I’ll try a million more times with you”

Chengcheng and Justin did a lot of dumb things, like betting on the oldest two in their friend group, not caring if they got called out. Zhangjing did too, but maybe his risks were higher. But he wasn’t scared to do the dumb things anymore, not when now he had somebody to catch him again if he fell. 

He loved Lin Yanjun. 

And Lin Yanjun would always love him.

**Author's Note:**

> hey hey hey !!! im back with another fic hehe. omg im actually pretty proud of most of this fic, this is the longest thing ive ever finished even though its just 5k words, but nonetheless i love it because i havent ever properly finished a long one shot like this before. the ending is pretty rushed to be honest, and im thinking of rewriting and making it better (keeping the plot, just making it longer so its not as rushed) but at least im done with it now. honestly is i dont publish it before i rewrite im never going to finish. 
> 
> anyways tell me what you think about this story in the comments, i might keep writing stuff in this universe so tell me if you want to see stuff like that, if so about who, and feel free to give me writing advice, i love hearing ways to improve, and i hope you guys like this! thank you for reading !
> 
> if youre interested i have a chengstin one shot too (not same universe), and also an ongoing nct textfic if you stan them, so if you would like check it out on my profile (self promo hehe). also if you want, come yell at me on twitter :DDD link is https://twitter.com/hopies_land .


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